All's Quiet On The Western Front
by Ananke
Summary: The peculiar silence of love and war.


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Disclaimer: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and all related characters owned by Paramount Studios. No copyright infringement intended.  
Note: Nostalgia made me.   
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The end of it isn't at all like I expect.  
  
It's quiet, you see. After so many years in an engine room, so many months on the front lines of a war we never actually won, so much time missed, I've come to think the finale would be more. A boom, maybe, on a universal scale. Some blood. A big darkness.  
  
It just isn't. The only real warning comes through my private terminal, a terse missive from Deep Space Nine. Keiko is gone, taken on her last expedition to Bajor. It isn't another man or woman, or anything like that, or especially a sickness. It was the Borg, and Julian can't deny that it's bad. He's gone and used an experimental inoculation on himself while dictating the transmission, hoping to hold out a few days, a few hours more...to help ease the way for the children, you understand. I don't think he's afraid, though anger is there.  
  
He just wants me to find Dax before they do. By the time I get the message I figure him already well gone.  
  
Ezri and he live in a quaint old brownstone in a quaint old section of San Francisco by then, when they both manage to be on Earth. Dax has been talking about closing up shop and transferring back for weeks, ever since it became obvious that the little rip in Starfleet's control over the machine men is becoming a gaping wound. Oh, she wants to be with Julian, but part of it is the odd little idea all those aliens get that by staying clear of Earth they'll avoid every coming plague, or such. For a creature that might as well be a thousand years old and wears Commander's pips, Julian's second Trill can be downright naive. In the end, Earth is always the last fort.  
  
I don't know how she knows so soon, but Ezri is sitting straight up in bed when I jimmy the security system and step in. Her hair is dark and hangs over her neck by then, and those spots look ready to pop off her skin, which is about fifteen shades more white than I've ever seen any skin before.  
  
"Come here." The Trill whispers, her eyes wide and fixed on a spot over my shoulder, hands holding the silk looking sheets up properly. Awkward, I move on over, shuffling by the bedside. "No, come here." She insists, grabbing my hands and pulling me down, sheets falling as I sprawl, amazed. Before I can protest pale, cold fingers tangle in my right hand and lead it to her stomach, where a bump moves steadily. "Dax?" I question in embarrassment, trying to figure out a way to disentangle.   
  
"I'm not going to hurt you, Miles." Traces of Jadzia flicker through in her amused tones as her eyes close and head angles ever so slightly towards the small window and the slight sunlight. "Julian and Kira used to do this when she was carrying Kirayoshi, you know. She said she got cold. I think they just wanted to be close to a part of you."  
  
"That's not true." I deny uncomfortably, but knowing enough to know she'll see through the denial.   
  
"It won't be very long." Julian's wife prophesizes matter of factly splayed out on crimson sheets with my hand on her nude belly and three o clock shadows on the ceiling. "But it will be a while. They'll go for the Gamma Quadrant first, and the Beta. Maybe even backtrack to the Delta. The Borg know Earth. They'll need for it to be the last stand before they can actually dare take it for good. We have a good fleet, but still not well enough. Starfleet will use the big guns first. The Titan, the Enterprise. Worf will be there first. He'll go gloriously…" She rants on, a steady stream of tactics intermingled with personal regrets, nine centuries of regrets filtering through one terrified young vessel empty with death and full of life.  
  
"We're not going to die." I protest, pushing up and standing. "We've survived too much to do that now. Get dressed, Commander. We should get to Command. We'll have a battle plan ready, you'll see, and I'll be dancing little Julian on my knee in a few months time."  
  
"It was to be a girl, Miles." Dax lets me pull her up and wrap a robe around her, but the blue eyes remain locked elsewhere, jaw stubbornly set. "And we were going to name her Jade. Mila Jade. We talked about it all last week. You were going to help her learn about the Alamo and Keiko would teach her about nature. Jake was going to teach her to write and about Ben, and Kira was going to…"  
  
"This isn't like you."  
  
"They aren't suffering at all. It isn't bad, sharing your mind, not after you…you make peace with all the little lives you've lived and deaths you've died. It can be beautiful. We were planning on taking her to the pools on Trill in a few years; just get her used to the idea. It isn't very likely a child with human blood could ever host, of course, but it's a part of Dax we'd like to share."  
  
"Julian would like that." I agree gently.  
  
"Julian really hated the Trill." She says briefly, coldly. "We made him feel inferior. He needed a human to share his conversations and his games, for even with genetics Julian felt like a very dull boy most of the time. He could be a very sullen man. The spots were the only thing he loved. They were the only part of a Trill never changing on him."  
  
"That's not true." Insult mingles with argument. "Julian and I never talked about much of importance; we little not engineered humans were too stupid for him. And beside all that, you and Jadzia have different spots. You're not making any sense, Ezri."  
  
"None if it matters." Shivering violently, she flops back on the bed, looking the wan and scared kid that first came aboard DS9 all over again. Her arms beckon, jaw shaking as she lies back and pulls at me again. "Please, Miles. I'm cold…"  
  
"I know." I say gently and remove my shirt and shoes, forgetting about Keiko and spooning in crimson silk to place my hands over hers over Mila Jade's and be close to a part of Julian.  
  
In the end she sobs on my shoulder and I half dream of Worf delivering the baby and nanites spreading forth over the Earth from Ezri's womb and then I wake up, promising to find a phaser and get to her before they do, and we lie cold and as far away from Julian as paradise itself.   
  
And it's quiet. Just quiet.  
  
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End file.
